The dark song David Bowie didn’t want to write: “The words started appearing out of nowhere”
A true artist inhales and exhales their work with every passing respiratory function. With every beat of their heart, they create, refine, and develop, waiting to evolve their latest thought into an outward expression of their being. Perhaps only the greatest artists do this with their death as well. In that matter alone, David Bowie can perhaps be considered one of the greatest musicians of all time.
Of course, throughout his life he delivered countless singles and albums that will live on in the pantheon of pop music. Bowie, like few other artists, lived his life through his work, undulating with the personal triumphs and issues he faced, his music would find peaks and valleys alongside its creator. But perhaps his finest moment on record was Blackstar the album released almost in conjunction with his sad passing in 2016.
The record should rightly be considered one of the finest pieces of art this century. It is a courageous piece of artistry and one that confirmed Bowie’s ultra-legendary status like no other disc before it. However, it wasn’t the first time Bowie had spoken about his own mortality, and within ‘Heathen (The Rays’, Bowie allowed his subconscious to open and deliver his true thoughts on passing on to the other side.
Released as the title track to his album, the track is dripping with brutal sentimentality. Never one to put too much effort into his lyrical construction, once highly favouring the semi-random “cut-up method” used by William S. Burroughs, Bowie said of this track: “The words started appearing out of nowhere. I just couldn’t control them.”
While the track focuses on his own mortality and even pays tribute to the then-recently passed George Harrison by singing his lyrics, “All things must pass”, the tune originated from a moment that saw Bowie gaze upon a grazing deer on the mountainside: “The words came tumbling out, and I realised what it was about… not a dialogue between man and his god, between man and life itself.”
The track for Bowie was about: “Confronting the realisation that life is a finite thing, and that he can already feel it, life itself, actually going from him, ebbing out of him, the weakening of age.”
Bowie would offer yet more confirmation on the song in 2002, sharing that the song is perhaps his most difficult to fully give onself to, as it confronts such a stark reality: “‘Heathen’ is about knowing you’re dying. It’s a song to life, where I’m talking to life as a friend or lover. I virtually couldn’t change a word the moment I sung it into a tape recorder.”
Perhaps for that reason, ‘Heathen (The Rays)’ became one of the most difficult tracks Bowie ever put down: “Strangely, some songs you really don’t want to write. I didn’t like writing ‘Heathen’. There was something so ominous and final about it.”
But, throughout his life, music had always offered a gateway for him to express himself and understand the world, “But I couldn’t stop, they just flew out. It’s an odd feeling, like something else is guiding you, although forcing your hand is more like it,” he continued. “On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me.”
The song allowed Bowie to understand life and death in its fullest form, sharing: “We create so many circles on this straight line we’re told we’re travelling. The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.” One might suspect it is this knowledge that would allow the artist to make his parting gift so poetically poignant.
